Passy Cemetery

Passy Cemetery

The Cimetière de Passy, with the Eiffel Tower in the background
Details
Year established 1820
Country France
Location Passy, Paris
Type Public

The Passy Cemetery (Fr: Cimetière de Passy) is a cemetery located at 2, rue du Commandant Schlœsing in Passy, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France.

Contents

History

In the early 19th century, on the orders of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, all the cemeteries in Paris were replaced by several large new ones outside the precincts of the capital. The Montmartre Cemetery was built in the north, the Père Lachaise Cemetery in the east, and the Montparnasse Cemetery in the south. The Passy Cemetery was a later addition, but has its origins in the same edict.

Opened in 1820 in the expensive residential and commercial districts of the Right Bank near the Champs-Élysées, by 1874 the small Passy Cemetery had become the aristocratic necropolis of Paris. It is the only cemetery in Paris to have a heated waiting-room.

The retaining wall of the cemetery is adorned with a bas relief commemorating the soldiers who fell in the Great War. Sheltered by a bower of chestnut trees, the cemetery is in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

Notable interments

Among its more famous residents are:

Location

The street in which it is situated is named for a Free French pilot, Squadron Leader Jacques-Henri Schloesing (1919–1944) fr:Jacques-Henri Schloesing, who flew with the wartime RAF until killed in action, the day that Paris was liberated.

See also